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Friday, April 6, 2012

Labiaplasty and Pastrami Sandwiches

What sort of images or thoughts did reading the title of this blog post conjure? Did it pique your interests? Did you think "That's such an interesting title, I have *got* to read what this is about."?

Apparently, the author's mother "raised the perfect housewife... then she went to med school."

Perhaps she was trying to allude to the theme of her blog, which seems to be to create humor by mashing up completely unrelated topics of conversation.

Just look at some of her post titles:

Sex after Surgery and Spinach PestoAlter Boys and Roasted GarlicRevenge, Glitter, and Asparagus with EggsTraumatic Births and Spring Risotto

(She's a med student, but doesn't know how to spell altar... Maybe she's just obsessed with altering boys? Mmmbah-hah-hah... Get it?)

Perhaps she was trying to go for shock value?

Well, whatever. To each their own.

People are free to say and write whatever they want.

This *is* the internet, after all.

In one of her recent posts, however, she chose the wrong thing to joke about.

Circumcision and Mac and Cheese
I never expected to see these two things together in the same breath. Never in my life. And yet, there it was! If Domestic Diva was hoping to achieve shock value, she did not fail to deliver.

But what follows is more shocking.

It was so disgusting and so revolting I couldn't believe it.

In one instance, this person is trying to make fun of infant genital mutilation for her reader's amusement, and in the next, as if nothing had happened, she proceeds to give her readers a recipe for macaroni and cheese.

Imagine me poking fun at a baby girl as I cut off her labia. No, not her clitoris, just the extra flaps of skin that resemble chewed up bubblegum. (This might sound out of whack, but ask yourself, what choice words do people have to degrade the male foreskin? Read more about labiaplasty, here.)

Imagine me gazing at a baby girl's vulva to judge whether it's sexually mature enough before I cut into it. Imagine me making jokes of stimulating her in a sexual manner.

Now imagine me posting a blog about it with a recipe for pastrami sandwiches on the internet.

What would you think of me?

What would you think if I ever tried to trivialize and even try to draw laughter from the fact that I have taken a knife and cut off part of a baby girl's genitals?

You would think I was sick, disgusting and despicable, not to mention, unprofessional.

I'd like to dissect some of this horrendous entry:

Domestic Diva writes:"...my current patient was a "feeder and grower" premie (some babies are too tiny to go home right away and they need to learn how to eat). We were seeing him that morning when mom and dad informed us that they wanted a circumcision."

How she nonchalantly mentions the fact that her patient was already in a precarious position, having struggled to survive, speaks to her disinterest in the patient's well-being. More important is the fact that she is checking one more thing off on her to-do list to advance in her career, and the parents' wishes to have this child circumcised, the risks of operating on a fragile child be damned.

"My attending stated that we’d have to check the size of his penis since he was such a teeny munchkin, to which his mother bragged proudly, "Oh, it’s big enough."

We all looked while mom smugly looked on, and my attending then said, "Wow, it is."

And the fun didn’t stop there!"

The fun?

What was fun?

The fact that this child's mother invited her to gaze at her son's penis in a sexual manner?

And that she actually LOOKED?

Oh how funny!

Oh rapture!

Oh hardy har har!

But the "fun" didn't stop there, apparently...

The "fun" continues with deliberate misinformation.

"Now, for the sake of my male readers, I’ll spare you most of the details about this procedure. However, I will say that you need to make sure that you make a clean cut and then remove any extra skin to prevent an awkwardly bent penis later in life (and no one wants that!)."

First of all, the foreskin is not "extra." It is normal, healthy tissue with which every male is born. And second, removing too much skin may actually CAUSE the very complication she mentions! Removing too much skin may cause the wound to reopen later in life because the left-over skin cannot accommodate the shaft. (Read one man's story, here.) She is either not informed of the risks, or she is conveniently forgetting to mention them.

On with the "fun":"To describe this method on a particularly difficult piece of extra skin, my attending said to the senior resident and me: “Now you just use this towel and rub it out.”

Dad, sitting in the corner, burst out laughing.

My attending’s face went instantly red and she started blabbering, "Oh my god, I can’t believe I said that! It sounds like I was talking about jerking him off! OH MY GOD WHY AM I STILL TALKING! I’m sorry!!!"

Actually, she was "jerking him off." In order to give the doctors an idea of what they're working with, it is necessary to give the child an erection. The attending was quite literally jerking the child off.

A child goes from experiencing pleasurable sensations to excruciating pain. Isn't that funny?

Hah hah.

I nearly died.

"After taking a brief break to recover, we managed to perfectly finish the circumcision and took him back to mom. Dad walked in, pointed at my attending, then said to his wife, "You’re not gonna believe what she said back there."

It was at that point where we found it best to disappear from the room."

And come right out and write a blog post about it online, of course.

Outrage
I can't say how absolutely outraged I was when I read that disgusting, insulting piece of work. Followed by a recipe for mac and cheese? Really?

But the story doesn't stop there.

Oh, no, no, no.

Many of us intactivists, outraged by this sick, disgusting filth, tried posting commentary on her blog post, only to have it promptly removed.

And, as if this weren't enough, she provides a link to a Facebook page where she markets her blog. Others try to comment, and the same actions ensue, our comments deleted.

Well, all I've got to say is, she may refuse to publish dissent, but she cannot stop others from calling her out on her tasteless, disgusting sense of humor elsewhere. She is absolutely mistaken if she thinks she can just write something so revolting and insulting and not hear back from us.

The plot thickens
Determined to get to the bottom of this, I decided I'd investigate to see who this "Domestic Diva" was, and I was appalled at what I found. (Her blog gives a link to her blog's page on Facebook.)

These are the kind of people who eventually end up working at high positions in major medical organizations.

Is this the kind of people they have working at the AMA?

Does Gayeski know what the AMA has to say about infant circumcision? Even the AMA must acknowledge that the trend of opinion on routine male circumcision is overwhelmingly negative in industrialized nations, and that no respected medical board in the world recommends circumcision for infants.

"The British Medical Association has a longstanding recommendation that circumcision should be performed only for medical reasons... Recent policy statements issued by professional societies representing Australian, Canadian, and American pediatricians do not recommend routine circumcision of male newborns."
~AMA Report 10 of the Council on Scientific Affairs

The Bottom Line
The foreskin is not a birth defect. Neither is it a congenital deformity or genetic anomaly akin to a 6th finger or a cleft. Neither is it a medical condition like a ruptured appendix or diseased gall bladder. Neither is it a dead part of the body, like the umbilical cord, hair, or fingernails. The foreskin is normal, natural, healthy, functioning tissue, with which all boys are born.

Unless there is a medical or clinical indication, the circumcision of a healthy, non-consenting individual is a deliberate wound; it is the destruction of normal, healthy tissue, the permanent disfigurement of normal, healthy organs, and by very definition, infant genital mutilation, and a violation of the most basic of human rights.

Without medical or clinical indication, doctors have absolutely no business performing surgery in healthy, non-consenting individual, much less be eliciting any kind of "decision" from parents.

Genital mutilation, whether it be wrapped in culture, religion or “research” is still genital mutilation.

It is mistaken, the belief that the right amount of “science” can be used to legitimize the deliberate violation of basic human rights.

Amusement at expense of defenseless children, at the expense of the most basic of human rights, is sick, tasteless and disgusting, not to mention out of line and unprofessional.

Megan Gayeski ought to be ashamed of herself.

Her post "Circumcision and Mac and Cheese" was insulting, disgusting and deplorable.

To make fun of a child and make sexual innuendo as you mutilate his organs.

And then to try to make it an interesting blog post about it for others' amusement.

I felt the same way when I read that post. It made my stomach turn. This disrespect we have for baby boys, male sexuality, and the flippancy with which we treat this heinous violation of their human rights breaks my heart. And sadistic, morally & ethically bankrupt 'medical professionals' like this sanction it. Thanks for this post!

Tremendous work Joseph! Thank you for exposing this sick individual who would joke about cutting healthy body parts a baby. That Megan Gayeski is the Vice Chair for the Medical Student Section of the American Medical Association makes her original post even more disturbing.

i commented after reading the original blog post that the picture of bloody tissue looking baby penis shaped pasta really made me vomit after reading her disgusting post. So glad the page was taken down. Nice work, Joseph.

Thank you for posting this. Her blog post has been making my blood boil. Not only could she write about something like that so callously, but the comments on her page (and of course, she wouldn't allow any differing opinions to be posted) said things like, "Two of my favorite things - mac and cheese, and circumcised kiddos!" Not only was there a complete disregard for genital autonomy, but almost blatent support for pedophilia. God protect my 3 little boys (and my daughter) from such disturbed people in our society!!

Also, you didn't mention it, but her "macaroni" was penne pasta... about which she said, "I was hoping someone would catch on!" ...because it's so funny that it looks like a cut off tip of a penis............

Gayeski is a revolting person. Disturbing is the thought that she is just one of many - she just happens to blog about her days. I am so glad that you brought this to light, but as I was reading it, and imagining this poor baby being given an erection as everyone made a happy joyful sound (oh, the hilarity! so clever we are!), and then cut, his "extra skin" peeled away like so much banana peel ... I realized that this is why I don't have a lot of female friends. I cannot stomach the thought of even being friends with women who chose this for their babies.

I followed the link for the labiaplasty, btw, looked at the before and after pics, and it was disturbing, to say the least. It appears that is is done for the same reason male circumcisions are done: to make it "look" cleaner. They look so flat. Entirely gone is the flower-like appearance that makes the vagina so wonderfully inspiring.

Natalie included a comment from the original blog post: "Two of my favorite things - mac and cheese, and circumcised kiddos!" Not only was there a complete disregard for genital autonomy, but almost blatent support for pedophilia.

And you mentioned as well, Joseph, the awfulness of the sexual nature of circumcision. I went through an experience with a pediatrician who insisted that I had to push my baby son's foreskin back daily until it was fully retractable - - or else it would fuse permanently ... blah, blah, you know. I always had to step in to tell him to take his hands off my baby's penis because every time - every time - he would get into position to push the skin back ("It will only bleed a little."). My refusal to allow it always was followed by his "fusion" lecture. This was a community health clinic, the sliding scale kind of clinic, so I can only imagine how the baby boys of trusting, uninformed mothers went home after a visit with him. I often thought (knowing what would result from manipulating the foreskin), what he is telling me to do is essentially masturbate by child, daily. wtf. Really, how is that at all a normal way to start a baby boy off?

He was a youngish doctor, and I wondered how it was that he learned such an ignorant practice. I thought only old doctors were that stupid. Well, knowing that doctors like Gayeski are helping to guide medical students, that explains it.

I'm afraid doctors only know what they're taught. I'm afraid American doctors are being taught blatant misinformation. It doesn't help that male doctors are circumcised and thus have absolutely no experience of their own to talk from. American medical curriculum is in desperate need of an overhaul.

Forced retraction leads to severe scarring, thus fusing the præpuce to the glans. The pediatrician evidently wants to make parents damage their babies, so that they will have to pay for fixing their babies. This is what Doctors Opposing Circumcision has to say about forced retraction: